Out of the Valley of Death

[Arctomecon Merriami]

I wore a white poppy
and someone asked me why.

As if I was a coward, I suppose,
or someone who didn’t care about those
who made their sacrifice in the mud of conflict.

For honour, I said, for our dead:
all our sons and daughters,
all the dead mothers and fathers
and for ruin, for the sake of ruination.

Always Looking

always looking…
…a blind man’s fingers
on rough wood grain
feel the story in its ridges

always looking…
…a woman in her mirror
searching for her soul’s becoming
finds the segments of her face

Stones

Time,
In the watershed
Of an afternoon,
Rolls like water drops,
On the window pane,
Changing in the light,
Moving downward
Towards evening.

Wind Song

Should yellow
Be the colour
Of the hills
And the trees’
Leaves shaking,
Their fear of falling…

…or their slender grip
On limb or branch,
Their brittle stems:
Time’s brown strand
Grown weaker?

Poetic Difference

Time was short
But my lines were long.

If there was a story to be told
I was too breathless to tell it.